Tips to succeed with your new year's resolutions

Coming out of holiday season, when most people overeat and often times neglect their health, many people make one of their new year's resolutions to lose holiday weight, start working out and lead a healthier lifestyle.

Here are some important tips to make sure you succeed:

- Set up realistic goals. If you are 50 lbs overweight and never exercised, don't say you will start going to the gym 6 days a week and get to your ideal weight in a couple of months. Plan on going 3 days a week and give yourself time to achieve your goal and adapt to your new lifestyle.

- Be mindful of the size of your goals. For someone who never exercised before, starting to exercise and lead an active lifestyle is a huge goal. If you take on a goal like that, don't take on a lot of other big goals at the same time.

- Get help. You are much more likely to succeed at getting fit and losing weight if you hire a good personal trainer. If you need to eat healthier, consult with a nutritionist or nutrition advisor.

21 Ways to Stick to a Workout

With the new year just around the corner. Many people make getting in shape their new year resolution.

This article has some cool tips.

Click here to read the article

Click here for an article of mine on how to stick to your workouts

Being Fit is More Important Than Being Thin

A recent study of over 2,600 men and women shows that people are better off being in shape and overweight than thin and out of shape.

This comes to show that contrary to what most people believe, you can be active and even fit but still overweight.

There can be several reasons why a person can workout but not lose weight. Usually a good trainer can help with that. But regardless of the weight loss results, working out will have great impact in your health.

In fact, as the study shows, it is the most important thing you do.

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Heart Attack May Have Different Symptoms For Men and Women

Earlier this year my dad passed away from a heart attack.

What is even more heartbreaking is the fact that one of my uncles saw him earlier that day and noticed that he seemed very stressed out.

Being a very strong man- and very stubborn- I can just see my dad feeling the symptoms of a heart attack and trying to just ignore it.

People often times ignore symptoms that can indicate a serious condition out of a mix of fear of what that could be, fear of looking silly or wimpy for overreacting, and hope that whatever it is, it will go away.

The more you know about the possible symptoms the more likely you are to survive or help someone survive a life threatening situation.

And please never, never ignore symptoms. There is nothing embarrassing about making sure you stay alive.

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Steroids in Sports: Questions Answered

This article answers some common questions about steroids. One of the good things the article says is that in reality we don't know the long term side effects of performance enhancing drugs.

Through many years in the fitness and martial arts worlds I have come to two big realizations as far as steroid use:

1- Steroids are much more commonly used than the average person thinks. In some sports you are actually more likely to find an athlete who is taking some sort of performance enhancing compound than one who is not.

2- There are a lot of exaggeration out there about the effects of those drugs. And although I am not in favor of using them, I don't believe we should lye to try to scare people from using them. If someone tries it and sees that most of the bad things they have heard about steroids are not true, they will be more likely to use it even more.

A lot of people think that the minute an athlete starts using steroids he will loose a lot of hair, develop breasts and become an extreme violent person. This are all possible side effects but they are the exception rather than the rule. So what happens is a young athlete tries it out and does not see any of those side effects. In fact the only thing he sees is that his performance improves quite a bit. From then on, this athlete is likely to always try to use something whenever he thinks he can get away with it.

So my position is that athletes should not use steroids because we don't know the long term side effects of it. But we should be straight forward as far as what we know.

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Overweight People More Likely To Have Bad Breath, Study Finds

The researchers are not sure what the reason is exactly.

But the bottom line is that we have one more reason to keep our weights down...

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The Germiest Places In America

There are two "schools of thought" when it comes to protecting yourself against germs: One says you must stay away from germs as much as you can and try to keep everything around you germ free. The other says you must have a strong immune system because it is impossible to stay away from germs.

I tend to agree with the second one. I've seen people who won't shake hands with other people because they are afraid of germs. And I've seen people walking around with a surgical mask during cold and flu season. And those are the people who end up getting sick most often, because they are focusing on the wrong aspect of health. You don't want to be silly and overexpose yourself to germs, but the most important thing is to boost your immune system.

There are several things you can do to help build a strong immune system:

- Eat right -including getting enough protein and limiting carb intake.

- Exercise

- Take relaxing brakes throughout the day

- Get enough sleep (seven to eight hours a day for most people)

Nonetheless, it helps know "where the danger is", so this is great article. We all know that public restrooms are pretty infested with germs, but most of us don't think of our own bathtubs as germy places...

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